Fairy Tale Re-Tellings

I don't know about you, but I love reading a well-told, re-told fairy tale. Here is one in the succinct form of a tweet. B/c Jenny Johnson is kind of awesome.

Book Review: Fairy Re-tellings in a Predictable Future

I finally got around to reading my ARC of Marissa Meyer's Cinder. A lot of you have probably heard of or already read this novel. It is a re-telling of Cinderella, in a future setting, and has a distinctive cover that highlights the android element that makes up a large part of the story:

Overall, I enjoyed this novel. I had some problems with it, but I wanted to continue reading it, and felt that overall, the writing was fairly accomplished.

So, let me begin by talking about my biggest problem with the book: predictability. I realize that, as a fairy tale re-telling, obviously, some of the plot should be obvious. But the twist at the end, when the main character essentially becomes a princess character, was something that was obvious at the beginning of the novel. What feels like it should be a "clue" is actually a very obvious foretelling.

Yet, despite the predictability, as I mentioned previously, I did want to continue reading.

Also, I liked the setting of the novel. One, it doesn't have that "fake historical" feeling that a lot of novels get by trying to re-tell the fairy tale in a middle ages setting into which the current setting is all too present. I also liked that the novel takes place in China - or rather, New China, in this futuristic setting.

I like that this novel was fairly interesting to read, despite the fact that much of the novel lays out a lot of groundwork for the series of which it is the first book (the Lunar Chronicles series), and is therefore fairly full of exposition.

Upon finishing this book, I am actually interested to continue the series -- which lately, has felt pretty rare to me when I pick up a series.

Hopefully the Movie's Better

The commercials for the Red Riding Hood movie coming out soon intrigued me. I mean, sure, chances are it's as horrible as the Twilight movies. But the possibility that it isn't is exciting. & as you know (or are about to find out), a YA novel was recently released as a "companion" to the movie. So you know I bought it. Here's the cover (which I adore):

I was really hoping to like this book. I like fairy tales. I like new twists on fairy tales.

I also, however, like good writing. This book didn't have that particular characteristic.

I liked the ideas & I could have liked the characters, if they had been fleshed out a bit more. The story is mostly told from Valerie's point of view, in a meandering fashion that makes her seem extremely indecisive and somewhat flaky.

Basically, the writing is very simple. That's not always a bad thing. A lot of great writers write in simple sentences. It's concise, and often beautiful in it's lack of unnecessary complication. So it's not really the simplicity that bothers me - it's that the simplicity is paired with a lack of sophistication. There's no grace to the story. One sentence wobbles along after another, like a toddler learning to walk. It is clumsy and sometimes completely misses the mark and falls on its' butt.

There were two sentences that I liked:

"Valerie was not who she had been. She felt parts of herself softly crumbling off, like a cliff falling into the sea."

That was it. The others sentences revealed too little or revealed too much or just didn't strike my intellect in an appealing way.

Have you read Red Riding Hood? What was your opinion?